I’m not sure who really is smarter, Bill Clinton or George Bush. Really, it’s a tough call. They are both just so absolutely brilliant, each in their own way, each getting what they want and each having the ability to screw people left and right without them ever knowing it. On the one hand you have the most highly educated president in our nations history that has convinced his enemies that he just somehow bumbled his way into the position he is in, that he is not at all politically savvy, and that he has no ability to strategize. Yet somehow this self-made millionaire, Yale graduate, Harvard MBA; oh excuse me, I meant to say idiot with an odd speech impediment. Somehow this jerk is able to push through just about every one of his most wanted initiatives ostensibly without the ability of his political opponents to stop him. Just dumb luck I guess, NOT!
Then we have a former president that makes what appears to be a most magnanimous gesture to a fellow member of the presidents club, yet hardly anyone notices that he just diverted attention from the fact that he is guilty of exactly the same supposed offences of the poor soul he just rescued, even more so. But wait, it gets better. Not only does he head off any possible examination of his own record on WMDs, and in particular the nuke issue, but also he now has effectively taken away the only issue the democrats were making any headway with.
Now why did he do that??? We were beating Bush up pretty good with this; his poll numbers were dropping and everything, so lament the democrats. Is not this former president also a democrat? The answer is yes and no. Yes he is a democrat, but that is not what he is about. He is the center of his universe, and his party is secondary to who he is, it always has been that way, and I suspect it always will be. What people fail to appreciate about Clinton is that it’s all about Bill. There is nothing more important to Mr. Clinton then the reacquisition of his presidency and his former residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, even if it means that he obtains it by using his wife as a surrogate. Even if it means making sure that only weak democrats run against Bush. Even if it means sandbagging the fund raising efforts of some of these people, as he has done. Mr. Clinton has worked behind the scenes and he has shaped the playing field of democratic hopefuls just as he wants it. If it means helping Bush as his poll numbers start to slide, he will do it, in fact he just did. He is setting things up for his wife’s presidency even at the expense of his party losing the next election, but so few can see this. In fact you can’t see it at all if you don’t understand Bill, a genuinely brilliant man.
Freeman
